We Always Make a Profit, Plato's Ideal State, the Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton

We Always Make a Profit

Can we always make a profit? Toward the end of In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky describes a newspaper reporter’s  conversation with Gurdjieff at a train station. Gurdjieff made a number of enigmatic statements about business and the Russian Revolution. The reporter asked, “Don’t you make profits, too?” [Gurdjieff] smiled… and said with gravity: “We always make a […]

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Intellectual parts of centers, Fellowship of Friends

Using Intellectual Parts of Centers

How do we use the highest parts of ourselves to work towards awakening, and rest when needed? Intellectual parts of centers need to work together for us to truly remember ourselves. The Four Lower Centers Fourth Way authors alert us to the fact that we have seven brains, rather than one. Two of them function in times […]

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Movement and rest, Fellowship of Friends

Fourth Way Authors on Movement and Sleep

How do our patterns of movement and sleep interact? Seminal Fourth Way authors G. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky describe how unnecessary movement and sleep–our old patterns–pose obstacles for one seeking consciousness.  P.D. Ouspensky, from A Record of Meetings:  The Role of the Moon in Mechanical Movement and Sleep At present all our movements depend on […]

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Sharing the Light with Others

Sharing the Light in our Work with Others

How do we work with sharing the light with others? The Wish to Prolong Presence The human machine is a wonderful invention. It is a machine that can produce consciousness. That consciousness has degrees. It can be closer or further away from what Gurdjieff and Ouspensky called the second state, or day-dream state. Some higher […]

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real work, fourthwaytoday, Robert Earl Burton, Fellowship of Friends

What Makes School Work Real?

What, in fact, is Real? Mr. Gurdjieff assures us that in the conditions of ordinary life, we encounter our true selves only very rarely. It often occurs when presented with surprising or unusual circumstances. It is in these moments of presence, or self-remembering, that we connect with actual reality, that we are truly ourselves. Indeed, […]

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FourthWayToday, Fellowship of Friends, Parthenon, Robert Burton

The Concept of a School’s Task

In Search of the Miraculous Why, when we travel or study, do such monuments as the Sphinx, the pyramids and temples of Egypt, the Parthenon, Delphi, and statues of Greece attract us emotionally and psychologically?  Because they are miraculous. Monuments like these tell us stories and show us truths beyond our scope. They bring a clarity […]

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Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, Ancient Egypt, Three Lines of Work

Extending One’s Work Beyond Oneself

Stuck in the First Line of Work You recently learned about the idea of self-remembering and tried it for the first time. You had a taste of awakening to higher states and realized that this was who you really wanted to be. But something is not quite right. The time that elapses between your efforts […]

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Life in School, meeting

Life in School

A School Requires Special Efforts It is not necessary to awaken to satisfy all the demands of life on the planet earth. Consequently, awakening requires that one make efforts beyond those one would make in life. This is the idea of “super-effort.” Ouspensky describes, in In Search of the Miraculous (page 347), when a man, after […]

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Fellowship of Friends - Fourth Way Today - Zen circle

Quotes on Unity and Multiplicity

Quotations from Fourth Way authors Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on unity–and our innate multiplicity. Acknowledging Plurality Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small I’s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each […]

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